Past Exhibitions

A Deeper Look at the Animated Figure and Its Presence in Contemporary Works

This installation asks why animation has been excluded from the Western definition of fine art as "art forms developed mainly for aesthetics" through the juxtaposition of seven different pieces from the Walt Disney animated feature film Pinocchio and three contemporary works of art that feature animation.

Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art

October 08, 2011, through March 11, 2012

The fourth in a series of exhibitions presenting the Hood’s extensive and varied holdings, Native American Art at Dartmouth surveys the breadth and depth of the permanent collection of indigenous art from North America, from the historic to the contemporary. Guest curators George Horse Capture, Joe Horse Capture, and Joseph Sanchez each contribute unique experience and perspective as well as a discerning eye in the presentation of the Hood’s varied holdings of Native art. This exhibition reveals the transformation of traditional iconography and showcases the use of non-Native media in contemporary artistic expression and visual narrative, including the work of former Dartmouth Artists-in-Residence Allan Houser, Fritz Scholder, T. C. Cannon, and Bob Haozous.

Cultural Hybridity in the Funerary Arts of the Roman Provinces

This installation presents examples of the kind of hybrid visual culture materialized in funeral art from certain key provinces—Syria, Africa Proconsularis (modern Tunisia), and Egypt—created during the era when the Roman Empire was at its greatest extent.

The Dartmouth Pow-wow Suite

August 27, 2011, through January 22, 2012

In spring 2009, the Hood Museum of Art commissioned Mateo Romero, Class of 1989, to paint a series of ten portraits of current Native American Dartmouth students as they danced at the college’s annual Pow-Wow. He photographed his subjects in May of that year and completed the almost life-sized portraits in 2010, using his signature technique of overpainting the photographic prints.

From ancient times to the present day, portraiture has been a medium in which individuals could create an illusion of themselves in a very selective and proscribed manner. This installation features four portraits, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, George Romney, Elizabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, and Pompeo Batoni, which suggest that portraits are always a construction of some sort, though the attentive viewer can uncover their secrets.

American Art from the Huber Family Collection

June 11, 2011, through September 04, 2011

This exhibition features over thirty examples of American impressionist and realist pastels, drawings, and paintings by some of the leading artists active at the turn of the twentieth century, including Cecilia Beaux,Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Robert Henri, John Singer Sargent, Everett Shinn, John Sloan, John Henry Twachtman, and J. Alden Weir. Collected by Jack Huber, Dartmouth Class of 1963, and his wife, Russell, these works reveal a range of responses to the dramatic cultural and artistic developments of the era—from the brilliant colors and broad handling of the impressionists to the grit and verve of the urban realists.The predominant aesthetic in this collection, however, is the period taste for refinement and tranquility as seen in serene landscapes, poetic still lifes, and, especially, images of elegant women in repose.

This traveling exhibition and publication are drawn from the Hood Museum of Art’s George Maciunas Memorial Collection of works by Fluxus artists, enriched with loans from the Museum of Modern Art, Harvard University, and the Walker Art Center. Intended to provide a fresh assessment of Fluxus, the installation is designed to encourage experiential encounters for the visitor. The 1960s–70s phenomenon that was Fluxus resists characterization as an art movement, collective, or group, and it further defies traditional geographical, chronological, and medium-based approaches. The fundamental question—“What’s Fluxus good for?”—in fact has important implications for the role of art today. The function of Fluxus artworks is to help us practice life; what we “learn” from Fluxus is how to be ourselves.

The Hood Museum of Art houses one of the oldest and largest college collections in the country, with more than 65,000 objects from the Americas, Europe, Africa, Papua New Guinea, Australia, and many more regions of the world.